


Responsibility

by Ellisama



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Only Sylvain and Ingrid were recruited, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24150658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellisama/pseuds/Ellisama
Summary: They all go a little crazy after Edelgard falls. Not at first. First they bury their dead, sign treaties, and sleep off a five-year exhaustion that never quite fades. But then the euphoria sets in. People are dancing in the streets, drinking songs fill the night, and soldiers fall into each other’s arms, crying and laughing in equal measures. They're alive. There is peace. Who would have thought?Ingrid is not immune. She eats for two (or three or four), let's Raphael fill her cup with wine once or twice (or thrice or- well you get get the picture) and ends up sleeping with Sylvain.Wait. Rewind.What?
Relationships: Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 32
Kudos: 107





	Responsibility

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks Arihime and Trixtar for the beta, and Haley for the feedback! 💕

They all go a little crazy after Edelgard falls. Not at first. First they bury their dead, sign treaties, and sleep off a five-year exhaustion that never quite fades. But then the euphoria sets in. People are dancing in the streets, drinking songs fill the night, and soldiers fall into each other’s arms, crying and laughing in equal measures. They're alive. There is peace. Who would have thought? 

Ingrid is not immune. She eats for two (or three or four), let's Raphael fill her cup with wine once or twice (or thrice or- well you get get the picture) and ends up sleeping with Sylvain. 

Wait. Rewind. What? 

Ingrid wakes up the next morning snuggled against Sylvain's chest. His chest hair is ginger too and tickles her nose. She didn't need to know that. She didn’t need to find out this way. 

“So…” Sylvain says, catching her off guard. Her fight or flight instinct triggers immediately, and she jumps apart from him and kicks him where the sun doesn’t shine. “Ouch! That’s uncalled for Ingry!” he bemoans, but his tone is playful, relaxed.

“Sorry!” she shrieks. 

Sylvain laughs and fishes a few of her hairs out of his mouth, a shit-eating grin on his face.

Ingrid tries to save some of her dignity by turning to the wall, away from Sylvain. “I didn’t realize you were awake.”

“Well, if I wasn’t before, I am now.”

Before Ingrid can answer, her stomach does it for her, roaring like a lion. Alcohol always makes her particularly famished.

“Hungry? I guess we had quite the workout.” 

Ingrid turns around again just to punch him in the chest for that remark. 

Sylvain shrieks, but he’s _still_ smiling. “Ack! Sorry! I’ll go get us some breakfast.” Then, he adds more quietly: "And… I'll get the herbs. You know, so you won't…" _Get pregnant._ He doesn’t say it, and yet the words echo through the room as if he had shouted them for the world to hear.

Ingrid’s hand goes up to her stomach immediately, fear pooling deep in her belly. She hadn’t even thought about it before, but now it’s all she can think about. She hasn’t been this scared since the war escalated and taking a life became as commonplace as breathing. Dying is easy. Living is harder. Creating a life? Her breath stocks in her chest, and her eyes burn.

Sylvain takes one look at the mortification written all over her face and pulls her against him in an awkward parody of a hug they sometimes share at the end of a particularly gruesome battle. It’s different when neither of them is wearing any clothes, and it’s doing nothing for her nerves. 

Sylvain gets up from the bed, and Ingrid turns her head away, despite the fact that it’s nothing she hasn’t seen before last night. It’s different now that the light of the new day is filtering in through the curtains, and the liquid courage is gone from her bloodstream. 

“H-how…. does this work?” Ingrid asks awkwardly, swallowing down her fears.

"You brew tea from them and drink it for the next three days, twice a day. It’s not… It’s not 100% guaranteed to work. But if it doesn’t. I-I'll take responsibility," he says solemnly. 

_Responsibility._ Ingrid laughs, but it comes out sounding cruel and twisted. "Do you say that to all your girls?" 

The kind look in Sylvain’s eyes extinguishes like a candle in the wind, and Ingrid immediately regrets her words. She’s hurt, confused, and absolutely out of her comfort zone, but that’s not Sylvain’s fault. Not entirely at least, if the enthusiastic marks on his neck are any indication.

"No," he says brusquely and throws some clothing on with enough force to rip one of the seams.

Ingrid sighs and combs a hand through her unruly hair. It’s a lost cause. “Sylvain, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You don’t have to pretend with me. I think you meant exactly what you said,” Sylvain answers, and when their eyes meet, she sees something she hasn’t seen boil to the surface in years. Not since Miklan, at least.

Not even when they found Felix and Dimitri after Gronder Field had finally stopped burning. Or, at least what remained of them. Deep inside, they had always known that it would come to this the moment they abandoned Felix’s seemingly hopeless search for Dimitri and rode out to honor a promise to a long-dead professor. 

Sylvain is an excellent actor, and although intellectually, she knows how much he is hurting, he rarely shows it. But it’s there now: ice-cold hate, cold enough to suck all lingering warmth out of the room. Ingrid shivers involuntarily. She knows better than to think it’s directed at her.

Sylvain storms off, leaving her alone in his room. Ingrid lets herself fall back into his bed. The sheets smell of sweat and sex and Sylvain, and she doubts she smells any different. She feels filthy and hungover, but that's as much her own fault as it is Sylvain's. 

(Who is she even kidding.)

She sighs and puts herself back together as well as she can. Sylvain is surprisingly organized, but he is also two heads taller and a great deal wider than her (as she has become intimately aware of last night, a dangerous voice in the back of her mind whispers). Any shirt of his is a tell-tale story of what happened last night, so after four tries she picks the cleanest one and puts it on. It's a caricature of a red dress she'll never wear, but it covers all the important parts, so it will have to do. The rest of her clothing goes into a bag, and she makes the bed for good measure.

When she closes the door, she can’t help but think of how many women have made this walk of shame before her. She always vowed to never join their ranks, and to not let it get between them too. 

She passes Dimitri’s old room, and then Felix’s. The doors are unlocked, but the chambers themselves remain unused, either by some mercy from Claude or an intervention from the professor, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know if Lord Rodrigue is still alive, but Byleth promised that if they ever caught wind of his whereabouts, she would personally hand him Felix’s sword and Glenn’s black spur. Two sons dead in less than a decade, only ashes and steel left of them to send home. Ingrid almost hopes Lord Rodrigue isn’t alive, because death is a kinder fate than that. At least they were able to return some of Dimitri’s ashes to Dedue when they met him in Enbarr. Despite their rocky history, there is nobody alive she would rather entrust to put His Highness’ remains to rest. 

What little is left of Faerghus has surrendered, and Enbarr has been conquered. Dimitri is dead, and so is Edelgard. Two centuries-old countries and bloodlines wiped away in the span of a few months. Yesterday, Ingrid felt like they had won, but all that remains is a hollow, pyrrhic victory. The world is upside down, everything she ever knew is changing, and she just alienated her only remaining friend. 

Ingrid bites her own cheek and considers turning around. Waiting for Sylvain on his bed until he comes back, but in the end, decides against it. She crosses the hallway and opens the door to her own room. She knows better than to corner Sylvain when he is hurt. Best to wait for a moment before either of them say things that they can’t take back.

She slips into her own bed, cold but clean, and counts the cracks in the wall until sleep claims her. When she wakes up, a plate of stale sandwiches, a bag of herbs, and some carefully written instructions are waiting for her on her desk. 

Ingrid follows the instructions to the letter. There is no name, only an apology scribbled in careful cursive.

She cradles her head in her hands, a headache starting to bloom up anew, this time completely unrelated to alcohol.

“Idiot,” she mutters to her empty room. “You’re not the one who should be sorry.”

\---

Ingrid feels stone-cold sober when the Professor delivers the news that evening. They’re not done yet. They may have won the battle, but there is another war, one older than any of them, that still needs to be won. This will be their true final battle.

They celebrated too early, and she is glad that she hasn’t sent that letter home yet to announce her arrival. It’s partially because she doesn’t know what to say. Apologize for leaving? It might have been a split-second decision, but it was for the best. Claude has promised Galatea’s security after the war out of gratitude for all she has done, but words don’t feed mouths. And although Glenn is long dead and Felix is too, she still feels a lingering responsibility for Fraldarius. Rodrigue had always been kind to her; he just hadn’t had more to give. 

So no, she’s not going to apologize, even if deep down she wants nothing more than for her father to forgive her. Even if she knows he will. 

The ink on her pen turns dry. What else is she going to write? A recollection of the battlefield, of how she turned against her own countrymen and king? No matter her reasons, if she ever wants her father to look her in the eyes again, that won’t be it.

In the relative privacy of the library, Ingrid rubs her tired eyes. Wonders what it would be like if her mother was still alive, if she still had any recollection of her. Would she be like Rhea, kind but stern, or like Manuela, capable but also slightly unhinged? Ingrid feels a little unhinged herself, lately. Too much blood, too many friends she’s never going to see again. A whole generation, a nation, and a millennium of history, coming to an end over the course of a few months. It feels like death is all around her sometimes.

Ingrid sighs deeply, her hand on her stomach. It’s time to make Sylvain’s tea again. War is no place for a child, and her father and brothers will first kill Sylvain and then her if they ever hear what they did last night. No, that’s one thing she will definitely not write home about. 

Then a thought crosses her mind- _Sylvain_. He’s never been shy about flaunting his many conquests, like the self-sabotaging fool he is. He knows her, knows her plight, but he never understood her own conflicted relationship with her crest. Too blinded by his own. Ingrid grimaces. The same could be said for her.

She gulps the tea down, burning her throat just to feel something other than this gaping hole in her chest. They’re both fools, but they’re alive at least. Now is not the time to be stubborn, if tomorrow could be their last.

\---

She finds Sylvain in the arms of a nun, just outside the cathedral. He’s smiling, whispering filthy nothings into her ears while his hands slowly wander underneath her clothing. In public! Ingrid digs her nails into her own skin to keep her from storming between the two of them, from yelling on the top of her lungs and drag Sylvain through the mud, literally. She’s not _jealous_ , has no claim on him just because she shared his bed, and it shouldn’t hurt because she knows what Sylvain is like. But it still hurts, and she’s more than a little furious. Maybe because to her, it did mean something, as much as she hates to admit it. He was her first. But she was one of his many. 

She grits her teeth. Reminds herself that twenty years of friendship are worth more than the anger that’s boiling in her veins. Swallows her anger as best as she can. And stalks towards the couple.

“A _word_ , Sylvain?” she quietly intones, not bothering announcing herself. It’s not the first time she has caught him red-handed, so to speak.

The nun at least has the decency to cry out in shame or at least shock, quickly turning as red as a beet. 

Sylvain is unrepentant, and places a kiss against the nun’s neck before he speaks. “Can’t you see we’re busy?” he says with a smile, but it’s a vicious one. He never looked at her like that before. She really hurt him, didn’t she? 

“ _Sylvain_ ,” she drawls warningly.

He looks like he is about to fight her on it, but the nun is already apologizing and cleaning herself up. She looks like a sweet girl, Ingrid notes, and she wonders how Sylvain had managed to ensnare her. 

When it’s just the two of them, Sylvain’s smile does fall from his face. “So.. any reason why you’re wandering the monastery at night? It’s dangerous, don’t you know? Ghosts.”

“There are ghosts everywhere, nowadays,” Ingrid admits, and the distant expression in Sylvain’s eyes fades a bit at that. 

“Are you… alright?” he asks, his hands twitching to reach for her. If not for… recent developments, for lack of a better word, she would have reached for him instead. Why did they have to ruin what they had? It wasn’t perfect, but it was them. Now they’re both awkward and hurting, and they might die tomorrow. She doesn’t want to die like this.

“Ingrid?”

“ _What_?”

“You were staring off into the distance.”

Ingrid shakes her head. “I’m sorry. It’s been a lot lately,” she admits, and sits down on the ground. She was angry, wasn’t she? Why does she feel so empty now?

Sylvain sits down next to her wordlessly, not as close as he normally would, but it’s something. 

She takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry for what I said this morning.”

“Don’t be. You weren’t wrong,” Sylvain says, guarded. 

For a moment neither of them says anything. Ingrid has cleaned up more of his messes than anyone else, knows exactly how deep his self-destructive streak can go. But that doesn’t make it right. 

“I shouldn’t have said it, even if it was.” 

Sylvain smiles, but it is an ugly smile, insincere. “I’m a big boy, Ingrid. I’ve heard worse, a lot worse. From you, actually.” _But it’s different when I was using you as much as you were using me,_ Ingrid thinks but doesn’t say. “You know that. So what is this about?”

He looks at her, looks right through her. Knows her as well as she knows him, and that is as much a blessing as it is a curse.

“I… need to know that you won’t tell anyone about w-what we did last night..”

“What, ashamed to be one of _Sylvain’s whores_ , as my father likes to put it?” Sylvain taunts, a touch of cruelty in his voice.

Ingrid winces. “ _Don’t_ put words in my mouth,” she spits back, equally vicious. Then, softer: “You know what would happen if people knew that I wasn’t pure anymore.”

Sylvain blinks, and Ingrid can barely stand to look at him. Then he grips her shoulders, and shakes her so violently it almost triggers her fight or flight reaction. “Wake up Ingrid! It’s 1186! We’re fighting for a whole new world! Adrestia is gone, and so is Faerghus! I saw you skewer two men in one movement with Luin a few days back! We’ve turned our back on Di- on our country! Sex is the least of the things that make you impure!”

A sword pierces straight through her chest, because she knows he is not wrong, but that doesn’t mean she wants to think about it. But now that the words have been spoken into existence, it’s all she can think of, and she feels bloodsoaked, dirty and _oh_ , so homesick.

“This is not about my personal beliefs, and you know that. After the war is over, I have a duty to fulfill for Galatea,” she hisses back at him, welcoming the anger back into her veins. She pulls herself free from his grip. 

Sylvain sneers, and she wants to punch it off his face. “With a mindset like that, nothing is going to change. Are you just going to let them sell you off like cattle?”

“If I have to, yes!”

“Well you shouldn’t!”

“I don’t have that luxury!”

“And you’re implying I do?” Sylvain roars back at her. It’s been a long time since she heard him raise his voice like this. “Do you think my parents haven’t been sending me one marriage proposal after the other right up until the moment we ran off for the reunion? They were so eager for me to do my _duty_ , to make a crest baby just in case I perish? Goddess, sometimes I think that Edelgard wasn’t entirely wrong.”

He’s panting by the end of his rant, pulling his own hair out, eyes wild. Going a little crazy, no, not going. They’re way past that point of no return.

Ingrid wants to reach out, more than anything. But the distance between them feels so big, so unbreachable, and she wonders why they’re doing this, why they’re destroying the last remnant of their childhood for…. for _what_?

She doesn’t ask that, wouldn’t know how to. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks instead.

Sylvain looks at his feet. “You never asked,” he says accusingly. “You have enough on your plate. I don’t know. Felix and I talked about it once, before-” He cuts himself off, and swallows deeply. 

_Before_. Yeah, that about sums it up. Ingrid hates that everything in her life has a before and after nowadays.

“Just…,” she starts, then stops, her mouth dry. A lecture dies on her tongue. Instead she tries to explain why the world is different for her than it is for him, tries to be reasonable. “People don’t hold men to the same standards as women, in regards to s-sex. If my suitors find out I’m damaged goods, they can bargain the bride price down. For Galatea, I can’t let that happen.”

Before she is even finished speaking, Sylvain has already gotten up to his feet. “ _Damaged goods._ That’s disgusting,” he says, and spits on the ground. 

“Sylvain, where are you going?”

Sylvain doesn’t even look back when he answers her, but just keeps walking. “Off to bed. A bed. I don’t know.” The self-depreciation in his voice isn’t funny, so why is he laughing?

His back turned to her is a metaphor for more than just the state of her relationship, she knows. 

“ _Sylvain-_ ”

“Don’t follow me.”

\---

She doesn’t. They don’t train together the next day, avoid each other during dinner, and when it’s time for chores, she joins Claude before the professor can assign her to stable duty with her usual partner, Sylvain. 

It’s childish -- stupid, even! -- but she doesn’t know how to fix this, not when Sylvain keeps finding new women to wrap his arms around in front of her, when she still hasn’t written that letter to her father. When she still feels so far from home.

Her period comes two days before they start their march for Shambhala. It’s a blessing, she knows, but some stupid, childish part in her wonders what it would have been like to have a child instead, to create life rather than end it for once. 

She imagines a girl with red pigtails and green eyes. The light of a crest flashes above her head. Ingrid violently shakes the memory away and burns it. It’s for the best. 

“I’m not pregnant,” she tells Sylvain the next day when they cross each other’s path on their way out of the war council.

“You-you’re not?” Sylvain looks around nervously, but nobody is around to hear. She made sure of that.

“Your tea worked. Thank you again,” she says, and bows formally, like she would to a king or an honored elder. It’s more distant than they have ever been, but she feels like she owes him at least this much, after his offer to take responsibility. After she spat it back in his face.

They stare at each other for a second, or a minute. It’s awkward in a way it’s never been, and Ingrid wishes she had slept with anyone else instead. Anything else would have been less messy, less complicated.

She balls her fists, grits her teeth. “Please, Sylvain, take care of yourself out there.”

She turns around to leave, determined to put this behind her as quickly as possible, but Sylvain is on her heels.

“Ingrid! Wait!” he calls.

For a moment, she considers dashing off, but decides against it. It’s childish. She’s been feeling a lot like a child lately, out of place in the world where she has no control of. 

“What?” 

Sylvain looks at her, really looks at her in a way nobody has looked at her, and she feels more naked than when she was in his bed. “T-thank you for letting me know,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, something that could be mistaken for a blush high on his cheeks. “Don’t… die out there.” 

Ingrid considers it for a moment before answering. “I will aspire not to, but a knight does what she has to do,” she says stubbornly.

“Right,” Sylvain mutters bitterly, and takes a step back. “I’ll…. see you around then. We’ll talk before we leave.”

They don’t.

\---

The battle in Shambhala is harrowing. Ingrid is a flier, a pegasus knight by heart. Her place is in the blue sky, and to imagine a life without the light of the sun on her skin... 

She doesn’t think too much about it. These people have more blood on their hands than she does, and at this point, she didn’t even know that was still possible. 

It would be over after this, the professor promised them, but it isn’t. An army is marching towards them, and not even Judith’s army could stop them, not even the legendary Holst Goneril. She has heard tales of the trails of destruction left in the wake of this unknown force, but only from the people that were able to run in time, and returned afterward. Whoever is leading that army, they don’t take any prisoners and don’t leave any survivors. 

She wants to feel bad for them, mourn the lives lost, but all she feels is tired. How much more can she take before she’s just a spear, claiming life after life? And even if it is over, can she ever return to the person she was groomed to be? 

Ingrid doesn’t know how many more final battles she can take. Maybe this truly is the last one, the last fight to end it all. Or maybe she will die here and end up another nameless white gravemarker on the field, forgotten before the end of the decade. 

It doesn’t scare her as much as it should, and perhaps that is the thing that frightens her the most: her growing indifference. She used to feel so much, used to be so sure. But that’s a long time ago, and she’s only twenty-three.

 _Damaged goods,_ she called herself. It’s true. Her future wedding dress will forever be stained with the blood of countless enemies. It’s her duty, she reminds herself. It’s what keeps her going, that stalwart belief. But some nights, it isn’t enough.

Ingrid writes her letter, but doesn’t send it. She gives it to Byleth instead, and asks if she can give it to her father when she dies. Her professor doesn’t comment on the fact she said _when_ , and not _if_. 

-

She knocks on Sylvain’s door the night before they leave for their next final battle. He isn’t there, and she doesn’t know why she hoped for anything else. They both have their ways to cope, and he isn't the only one responsible for the distance between them.

Ingrid debates leaving to her room, pretending this never happened. She turns around, but then she sees Dimitri’s door. Felix’s door. They’re unlocked. She feels a little unhinged, a quiet madness that drives her forward. She goes into Dimitri’s room. It is surprisingly well kept, not a speck of dust to be seen. If she didn’t know better, she would think he was just out with Felix, training until they are both bleeding and sweating, but smiling, even if Felix would rather die than admit it. 

But that’s exactly what he did: die. They’re never coming back. There will never be a time to make things right between all of them. All that remains are her memories and their rooms, and between the two of them she doesn’t know which one is more haunted. Suddenly, she feels like an intruder, like a gravedigger committing sacrilege. Dimitri isn’t here, and neither is Felix next door. They’re never coming back, and despite the bleeding wound in her chest that will never mend, life goes on without them.

She puts Dimitri’s books away. Closes the curtains. Prays, but only one verse. When she closes the door behind her, she breaks the lock, effectively locking it. It’s like closing the door to a past she didn’t know she was still holding on to. Apologizing for a person she never became. 

Felix’s door remains unlocked for another day, but if she gets back -- _when_ she gets back from this battle, she’ll clean that mess out too, and lock it forever, until peace comes at last and a new student breathes life into that haunted house. 

It’s not a cure for the sickness, for the yearning for a home she knows is no longer a place. But it’s a step in the right direction towards healing.

Without another doubt in mind, she marches back to Sylvain’s door - unlocked too, what is up with men and privacy? - and takes off her clothes. Borrows a shirt -- green, a good color on Sylvain even though he prefers black and red any day -- and tugs it over her head. She’s taking liberties, but she’s beyond caring. Ingrid lies down in Sylvain’s bed, buries her head in the pillow. It smells like sweat, blood, and Sylvain. A little bit like sex, maybe, but that’s a bittersweet memory too. 

Sylvain returns hours later, smelling like a story and a half. He shrieks so hard when he sees her, Ingrid is almost happy that there are two empty rooms between Sylvain’s and Claude’s. 

(Almost) 

“W-what are you doing here?” he demanded, back pressed against the door.

Ingrid sighs, and covers her eyes with her arm. “I wanted to go home,” she whispers. It’s easier to be truthful, to be vulnerable, when he can’t see her.

Sylvain sits down on the side of the bed like an intruder into his own room. Mutters something to himself she can’t quite catch, and exhales deeply. “Soon, Ingry,” he promises, but it’s empty.

“I shouldn’t have left.”

“We would have died too.”

Ingrid shakes her head, but doesn’t dare to uncover her eyes. “I didn’t mean… then.” Not always, at least. “The last time I was here. I shouldn’t have left this bed. Shouldn’t have let things get so bad between the two of us.”

“Neither should I,” Sylvain admits to the dark. 

For a moment, those words rest between them. A peace treaty, or perhaps just a quick interbellum. Ingrid is so tired of fighting. She scoots to the far side of the single bed, and pats the space next to her.

Sylvain lies down next to her, still stinking of the woman he was with earlier, but she tries not to hold that against him. Maybe she is a little jealous.

Through the open window, the sound of rain pattering on the roof filters in, a crisp breeze cold on her skin. She breathes it in, exhales. Listens to Sylvain doing the same. A comfort for soldiers who have seen too much.

“I went to his Highness’ room today,” she whispers into the dark.

Besides her, Sylvain stiffens. “And?”

“Have you been cleaning it?”

He shakes his head. “It’s Byleth. She takes care of all the rooms of the dead.” 

“But you help her,” Ingrid guesses correctly.

“Sometimes,” he admits, shrugging with false disinterest. 

They’re not ready to talk about the people they’ve lost. Ingrid doesn’t know if they ever will be, if there will ever be a time to after tonight. She imagines the starry sky above the monastery, so much brighter here than anywhere else. Perhaps that’s why they build it here. Garreg Mach is a holy place, but so is this room. It’s a different kind of divine, smaller, private. Not clear and thin like holy water, but thick and dark like the blood on her hands. 

They’re lying side by side, staring at stars they can’t see, looking at anything but each other, counting breaths like a lifeline. Time seems like it has stopped existing, and Ingrid thinks that maybe, if she just doesn’t close her eyes, this moment might last forever. But as soon as the thought crosses her mind, she feels childish again. The earth is littered with the ruins of kingdoms that believed they were eternal. She knows this better than anyone. 

A tear she doesn’t remember shedding rolls down her face. The rain outside is full of ghosts tonight. “We can’t go home again, can we?”

Sylvain’s voice is a quiet rumble in his chest.“Your father will take you back, Ingrid. As will mine. We’re too valuable to lose over something such as-”

She cuts him off, shaking her head. “You can’t return to a place that no longer exists. Home is memories, more than bricks, more than family lands.”

“Home is people,” he agrees, his hand ghosting over her own. “Gautier hasn’t been a home for me in a long time.”

Ingrid has spent too many days regretting things she didn’t do to hesitate now. She turns to him, takes his trembling hand in her own, and looks at him, barely visible in the dark. 

“I just wanted to go home. That’s why I’m here,” she admits, truthful at last, and not in the last place to herself. “That’s why I slept with you.”

Sylvain turns to her, their clasped hands between them like a prayer. “Then let’s run away. After this battle, hell! Before dawn. Pack our bags light, take our horses, and run until we find a place where nobody knows our names,” he whispers, a boyish look in his eyes but his voice dead serious. “We’ll get a small cottage in the woods. You can hunt for food, and I’ll farm to make do.”

She can’t help herself. She laughs. “You know nothing of farming. You made Felix and Dimitri do your chores every time you had to pull weeds, and now you want to make a living farming? We would have more luck becoming street performers.”

“You can’t act nor dance, Ingrid,” Sylvain reminds her. “We could always become sellswords. Mercenaries. Live by the blade. God knows we have enough practice in that.”

“That would be nice. But I’m so tired of fighting.”

Sylvain squeezes their hands. “Me too,” he whispers back like he is telling her a secret, like they’re teenagers again. “So maybe we’ll just find a church. Get married. See how we’ll make ends meet.”

Her heart skips a beat. She imagines it: a wedding with nobody there but the two of them in the ruins of an overgrown chapel, saying vows to nobody but each other, expectations and legacies be damned. 

“I’d like that,” she admits, feeling guilty.

Sylvain looks at her hopefully. “But…”

She shakes her head. Thinks of her father, of Galatea, of her dreams, _before_ and _after_. In the end, it will always come down to this. “But we can’t. I want nothing more than to go now, and run off to a little house in the woods. Be free. But I know I will always think of my duty, of the people who died because I was selfish. No matter how far we run, we could never get rid of that. I could never be happy.”

Sylvain, for all his posturing, knows duty as well as she does. Took the Lance of Ruin before the blood of his brother had dried. Fought a thankless, useless battle for five years before honoring a promise to a dead professor. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” he says, resigned. “You’ve always been the smart one.”

He’s wrong, because it isn’t until this moment that she realizes how much she wants to kiss him. “I love you, you know that right?” she admits as much to herself as to him. “Maybe not always like this, but not any less because of that.” 

“I’m not scared to die tomorrow. I’m not scared to return home and face my father. I’m not afraid of anything anymore. Or so I thought.” He’s trembling, shaking like a leaf. “Because that, Ingrid? That scares me shitless.”

“Yeah, me too. But I’m tired of running,” Ingrid whispers back. She pulls him closer, until their knees and foreheads are touching, and she wonders why it took them this long when they’re a mirror image of the same pain. “If we live through the night, let’s stay together.”

“I made that promise before. Didn’t keep it.” And when Sylvain’s voice breaks, so does her heart. 

She knows a part of him will never forgive himself for abandoning Felix, for breaking that promise. And a part of her will always mourn the king Dimitri could have been, the one she would have been proud to serve for the rest of her days. 

But she closed that door tonight. Feels a little bit lighter. Leans forward to brush her lips against his, only for a second. More would break her, if not him. 

“I don’t care,” she says, and means it.

“Ingrid. I’m broken. Long before this war started. And I keep breaking myself into pieces. I don’t know how to do anything else,” Sylvain pleads. 

“Then let’s not promise anything. Let’s just keep putting each other back together.”

Ingrid brushes her lips against his again, this time a little longer, a little bit more desperate. 

Sylvain drinks her in like a man in a desert, but when they break apart he sounds like one too. “Are you sure?”

_Is she?_

This is not the point of no return, she realizes with deafening clarity. She doesn’t know when that was, but it’s not tonight, not his skin against her own. It was probably when he looked at her from the top of his horse, stretched his hand out towards her, and reminded her of that promise they made to the professor. It had been dark that night, too. It had been a very long, very dark night that lasted several years. All the days fighting on the frontlines, searching for Dimitri, are stitched together in her mind, and she can barely tell them apart. But that night is like a sun in the midnight sky in her memory. 

Sylvain had smiled. _Really_ smiled, in a way that crinkled up the corners of his eyes and caught her by surprise. Looking back, that sheer courage to do what was _right_ , was what made her take his hand and turn their backs on their families. 

She isn’t sure, but that might have been the point of no return. It doesn’t matter. The point is that they have passed it. 

“I don’t expect this to fix us, miraculously. We can’t change the world any more than we can forget our past,” she admits, her breath hitching in her chest. “I just… hope you’re willing to try. Give me a chance. Us.”

Sylvain looks at her, really looks at her. He’s crying too, but without any tears. “You’re going to be disappointed.”

“I won’t.” It’s not a vow in a chapel, surrounded by white and flowers. But it’s just as holy, and just as sacred. 

Sylvain laughs, broken and battered, but beautiful too. 

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” he says in between quick kisses pressed to her lips, her fingers, her eyes. “I’ve thought that for a long time, long before you ended up in my bed.”

“I’m here now.”

“I know.”

“I’m not leaving,” Ingrid repeats.

“I… I know that,” Sylvain says, then, softer: “I _want_ to believe that.” Finally, his voice barely above a whisper, “It might take a while.”

 _Not only for you,_ Ingrid doesn’t say. She doesn’t have to. “We have all night.”

“And after tonight?”

“Don’t worry, Sylvain.” Ingrid kisses his knuckles, once, twice, thrice, a thousand times. Like a knight would do in a fairytale to his lady love. Their hands are too scarred and shaking for a pure love story like that, but that’s okay. She has been a little crazy for a while now. “You know me. I’ll take responsibility.” 

**Author's Note:**

> In the end, it's about being a little less broken together. Love doesn't fix your worst issues even if love stories would like to make you believe it does, but I believe that it is a little bit easier to move forward with someone to lean on. A glimmer of light during the darkest night. I think that lately, we've all been feeling a little lost, a little desperate and a little tired. I know I have. Writing is my way to cope, and I was long overdue to write something dedicated to one of my favorite pairings. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it, and let me know what you think! I'm [@ingrimasname](https://twitter.com/ingrimasname) on twitter and tumblr.


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